Project pivoting can sometimes be an important part of the design process. Project pivoting usually occurs after a prototype is released and feedback is received. For our third project, Sticky Situation, we had both an internal and external playtest session. From the feedback we received I think it would help the projects final product if we pivot towards an easier to understand main mechanic.

What People Liked

After our external play test we got a lot of constructive feedback. Overall, the people who played the game enjoyed the aesthetic the game was offering. Some other feedback we got was that people enjoyed the scale of the world compared to the player. Another piece of common feedback was that players liked the idea of mimicking to hide from predators.

What People Didn’t Like

As well as positive feedback, we also received some negative feedback that well help us distinguish what players liked and disliked. A very common occurrence in the feedback was that the controls weren’t very good. They were a bit stiff when controlling Stanley around the map and the controls for mimicking were very hard to work and were confusing. Some other feedback to do with mimicking was that it felt useless and had no point. This was because the AI didn’t react to the player at all, and while in mimic mode, your hunger still went down to the point that you would die. Some other feedback included players wanting to be able to scale the scenery, disliking lack of animations and wanted to be able to mimic everywhere.

What is Changing

I think from the feedback, the big thing that needs to be changed is the mimic mode. By adding better AI to the predators, it will give the players a bigger incentive to use the mimic mode. By also removing the health depletion while mimicking, it will allow the player to take a little bit more time and focus more of the gameplay on the main mechanic of mimicking.

Another big change would be the controls. By making the controls easier to learn and understand, and making them smoother, it would make the play experience more pleasant. Another thing that would help the controls that got some mentions in the feedback would be making the game controller ready.

By pivoting the project in these directions it would tend to the feedback of the players and make the game much more playable.